Almost four years ago now, I built a desktop computer that has been my companion during the last turbulent and traumatic four years. We have done everything together. From building and running international websites to watching romantic movies and even moving houses a fair few times. She came with me to Australia and now it seems it was only to be discarded and ignored.
It was in early December 2003 that I sat down to design a powerful working horse to perform some magic for my customers. I looked up the spec specialists at Ars Technica to see what they were recommending at that time, talked to master Kiddi and looked up the prices on his price comparison website. After much deliberation I decided to get an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ CPU, MSI K7N2 Delta-L, Samsung 120 GB disk, 512 MB of memory and a simple but efficient case to put it all together in. Once she was ready I named her “Eldskírn” after my first boat and turned her on. She was fast!
Now, four years later she is still reasonably fast. I over-clocked the CPU and increased the speed from 1800GHz to 2200GHz. This put her back into the arena of useful computers but unfortunately it also meant that I had to improve the cooling system by adding more fans to the case. I added 3 new fans and modified the case to improve airflow and she still over heats when I make her do difficult things. Worse yet the noise of all the fans make you feel like you are in a factory. And so, with a heavy heart and trepidation I started speccing a new machine.
My process was much the same as before. Look up the Ars systems guide, talk to Kiddi and then find a good value. Luckily my local computer dealer, Centre Com is quite cheap. In fact one of the cheapest in Melbourne. They offer good prices and the staff are friendly and helpful. You do however have to know your stuff before you walk in there as there is very little stuff on display or even in stock and the staff are swamped with work. Long chats about the properties of various components is not what you feel like doing there. After going through the process I made my decision and ordered the components.
It took me most of the day to put her together. She was playing a little hard to get. I had to install the operating system twice and the wireless network card kept freezing her up. Once she was satisfied though she turned out to be a real beauty! Intel Dual Core 2 E6750, Gigabyte P35-DS3R with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 8600GT video card with a fan free cooling system. I have named her RUDI-TOO, after my second boat. She purrs like a kitten and stays cool at all times while delivering outstanding performance. I ran the Performance Test software to see exactly how powerful she is and boy was I happy with the whopping 815 points she gave me! That is an improvement of about 500 points over old Eldskírn who scores 325 points when she is over-clocked and about 250 when in normal mode. My old laptop, Nafni scores only 125 and Suze´s brand new laptop is scoring 420 points. She is big, she is bold and she is beautiful; my all new power machine!
